The #1 (Not-So-Secret) Tip For Beautiful Skin

I have a secret to share. I think I’ve found the fountain of youth. Yeah, I know you’re laughing. But really. This is sorta big. And I can’t just keep it to myself.

It’s water. Now, you’re really laughing. So f’ing cliché and stupid, right? “Drink more water.”

Whenever I read that or somebody spouted the “drink 8 glasses a day” drivel, I just brushed it off or ignored it. Well that’s not exactly true. I actually tried it a few times but oh my god it’s so hard. And truly, who has that much time in a day to spend running to the toilet anyway?

But then New Year’s. And with it came a few new resolutions, one of which was try to drink a ton more water. Mostly because the holiday season stress and naughty eating did me no favors in the health department. Drinking more water is on every health list, so that’s where I started.

I don’t actually like to drink water. At all. I will drink tea, or put lemon in it whenever I was trying to take in more fluids. But this time, I tried to make myself drink plain water and maybe even begin to like it. I started with a huge glass jar (64 oz), which should have been the requisite 8 glasses. I filled it up in the morning and tried to down it regularly throughout the day. I’m not going to lie. This takes real commitment. WOW. The first week I think I ran to the toilet every 15 minutes. But I stuck it out. Mostly because the results were fast and amazing. My skin felt better (way, way better) in only days and looked so much different, even in a week. Softer, dewier, younger than it had in years. Especially around my eyes. In the last few months they had gotten wrinkly in the lids, hollow underneath, and just plain tired looking. I thought I was just getting to that point where, duh, aging catches up with you. But maybe that was just dehydration?

The second week was easier and I was actually getting thirsty if I somehow missed drinking my glass of water in an hour or so. At this point, I was trying to increase my water drinking to add another half of that jar before the day was done. The bathroom breaks stretched out longer. I felt like I had more energy. I didn’t feel so stiff – in fact I was feeling sort of bendy and stretchy. No more creaking in the knees. But there was also backlash – a couple of devastating floods across my desk, destroying piles of work, when I knocked the stupid water glass over that I wasn’t used to having there.

And then I found this article: a woman in the UK who had done the same experiment and her results. Nothing short of amazing. Holy cow, LOOK at her face! It claims that she started drinking a gallon a day, but that's not actually true. I found her original article, the one she wrote herself, and it was only 3 liters a day, which was my own jar and a half amount. If you only have a minute to spare - check out that first article because it's short and succinct, outlining how the proper amounts of water are essential for really every function of your body, from digestion, to joints, to skin, all of it.

And then, if you want to read her week-by-week diary of what it felt like for her for the first month, check that article out here. It's nothing short of miraculous. It is honestly the fountain of youth. Or as close as we're going to get anyway. Convinced? Headed for your water bottle?

I'm not at a full month, but I've got reason enough to make this a regular thing now. Still working out the "making it a habit" part. Like remembering to take it with me in the car when I run errands. Or how not to tsunami my keyboard. It's a work in progress. One that I highly recommend if you're a water-avoider like I was. And yes, it's supposed to help you lose weight too. Flushing toxins, keeping you feeling full, curbing cravings. Gah! Even more benefits. :)

There is only one of you in all of time.

One of my very favorite quotes. I go back to it whenever I'm discouraged, or feeling the "why bother, it's all been done before" blues.

I like the sound of "good madness"

Because I obviously can't get enough Neil Gaiman quotes about the new year . . .

Screw it up. Royally.

"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something. So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever."

- Neil Gaiman 

Looking for meaning

“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you. 

— NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON  

Simplicity

(For photo credits and to see my other photo sets, visit me on Flickr)

"I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind."

Albert Einstein

What lucky really is

"Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners going back millions of generations, and those winners were, in every generation, the luckiest of the lucky, one out of a thousand or even a million. So however unlucky you may be on some occasion today, your presence on the planet testifies to the role luck has played in your past." - Daniel C. Dennett - from Freedom Evolves

That quote gives me goosebumps. It's so terrifyingly inspirational - completely freeing and at the same time so full of responsibility and accountability. You want to live up to the opportunity you've been given. A little thought for a Friday.

BTW - the photo is a teacup piggie. I have seen this photo all over the internet repeatedly the last few weeks, so I have no idea where it came from originally or who to give credit to. But it's so adorable that I just couldn't help myself.

What is creativity

"Creativity is just connecting things." - Steve Jobs

Creativity. We always seem to think other people have it and we don't. Or that it's some mysterious thing that appears out of nowhere and we have no control over it. This new book delves into what creativity really is, how it works in the brain, how it's a part of each of us. Completely fascinating.

IMAGINE from Jonah Lehrer on Vimeo.

Jonah Lehrer, from the introduction: "The sheer secrecy of creativity — the difficulty in understanding how it happens, even when it happens to us — means that we often associate breakthroughs with an external force. In fact, until the Enlightenment, the imagination was entirely synonymous with higher powers: being creative meant channeling the muses, giving voice to the ingenious gods. (Inspiration, after all, literally means ‘breathed upon.’) Because people couldn’t understand creativity, they assumed that their best ideas came from somewhere else. The imagination was outsourced.”

As he begins to explain, it's just our own humble brains sifting through all kinds of bits and pieces all day long. Putting things together, trying to make sense of random information, making connections, accepting them or rejecting them, and then sometimes there are "AHA" moments, when two dots connect that we hadn't expected to. The excitement to have discovered something we think is new and that will make sense to other people too - that's the point of creativity.

"Creativity shouldn’t be seen as something otherworldly. It shouldn’t be thought of as a process reserved for artists and inventors and other ‘creative types.’ The human mind, after all, has the creative impulse built into its operating system, hard-wired into its most essential programming code. At any given moment, the brain is automatically forming new associations, continually connecting an everyday x to an unexpected y.” - Lehrer

And as I read on, I think "Ahhh. Why didn't I think of that before?" But it's really all about where you put your focus. Because where your thoughts go, that's where your own creativity lies. Some days I'm only thinking about smells. Or colors. Other days it's the business of the business - operations and functions and process. And still other days it's marketing and selling. I'm not sure if all that scattering around is more or less creative. But I'm looking at it in a whole new way.

Today's inspiration

Playing with a new toy today - Flickr and mosaics. Click here to see the images in larger format, with source info.

I'm working on a new promotion for St Patrick's Day. I'll be sending it out to my email list, so don't forget to sign up here. And I'll post it here too.